Synopses & Reviews
Nitido Aman knows he was born in Guatemala, but he doesn't know where, or why his family left. Raised in the United States by his immigrant parents, he never asked them about his homeland as a child-and they never talked about it. When Nitido loses his father to Alzheimer's disease, his despondent mother grows increasingly silent. Realizing that his only links to the past are disappearing, he travels to Guatemala, against his mother's wishes, to see what he can uncover for himself. He arrives in the tiny town of Rio Roto, where he suspects his family came from, prepared to ask questions, and perhaps find work teaching there. But when he is mistaken for the new local priest, Nitido decides to play the part, thinking that the confessional confidences of the townspeople will prove more fruitful than ordinary conversation in leading him to the answers he seeks. What he finds in Rio Roto, though, is a place shrouded in silence and secrets, a place that can neither escape nor give voice to the unnamed horrors it has survived. Nitido is at once determined and frightened to unearth these horrors-even as they force him to reevaluate his own haunted past. In elegant, hypnotic prose, Sylvia Sellers-Garcia delivers a story of divergent cultures and divided identities, of conflicts between generations and civilizations, of mourning, and, finally, of healing. When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep marks her arrival as a distinctive and powerful new voice.
Review
Impressive...Spare...Graceful...Part folk tale, part noir mystery, part meditation on the burden of history, this is a remarkable debut.
San Francisco Magazine
[An] impressive debut...[in which] the stage is set for the dramatic unraveling of near and distance savageries.
The New Yorker
Mesmerizing.
Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women
Synopsis
The award-winning debut novel that ?brings to mind the atmosphere and tension of Gabriel Garc a M rquez.?( Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women) N tido Am n knows he was born in Guatemala, but he doesn't know why his family left. Raised in the States by his immigrant parents, they never talked about it. When N tido loses his father to Alzheimer's disease, his despondent mother grows increasingly silent and N tido realizes that his links to the past are disappearing.
Seeking answers, N tido travels to Guatemala against his mother's wishes. Upon his arrival in the small town of R o Roto, he is mistaken for the new priest, and decides to play the part. From his parishioners, he catches tantalizing and frightening glimpses of the buried history he's aching to know. In a place shrouded in secrets, N tido is at once determined and frightened to unearth the unnamed horrors it has seen.
With her elegant, hypnotic prose, this marks Sellers- Garc a's arrival as a distinctive new voice in fiction.
Synopsis
In elegant, hypnotic prose, Sellers-Garcia delivers a story of divergent cultures and divided identities, of conflicts between generations and civilizations, of mourning, and, finally, of healing.
Synopsis
The award-winning debut novel that ?brings to mind the atmosphere and tension of Gabriel García Márquez.?( Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women)Nítido Amán knows he was born in Guatemala, but he doesn?t know why his family left. Raised in the States by his immigrant parents, they never talked about it. When Nítido loses his father to Alzheimer?s disease, his despondent mother grows increasingly silent and Nítido realizes that his links to the past are disappearing.
Seeking answers, Nítido travels to Guatemala against his mother?s wishes. Upon his arrival in the small town of Río Roto, he is mistaken for the new priest, and decides to play the part. From his parishioners, he catches tantalizing and frightening glimpses of the buried history he?s aching to know. In a place shrouded in secrets, Nítido is at once determined and frightened to unearth the unnamed horrors it has seen.
With her elegant, hypnotic prose, this marks Sellers- García?s arrival as a distinctive new voice in fiction.
About the Author
Sylvia Sellers-García was born in Boston and grew up in the United States and Central America. A graduate of Brown University and a Marshall scholar at Oxford, she has interned at Harper’s and worked at The New Yorker; her fiction has been published in StoryQuarterly. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American History at the University of California, Berkeley.